LEADER OF THE WEEK 🎙

John Howard - Founder at Slingshot

John is the Founder of Slingshot. They make, store, and ship swag to over 135 countries for companies like Adobe, Stripe, General Electric, and a ton of others. Swag is awesome. Managing it sucks.

John also sold his last company Black Airplane, a design and development agency back in 2017. They have done work for ChickFila, Coca Cola, Home Depot, McDonalds, and more!

What is your main day to day job as CEO?

We’re a tiny startup so my day to day involves tons of marketing, through Twitter mostly, product direction—I’m a designer by trade—and dealing with any customer sales needs.

My background is design and user-experience so I live in Figma. I have tons of iterative cycles we go through to get to what our customers see.

Explain your philosophy around leadership? How do you think about it?

I lead by showing! I’m a firm believer on going through the pain of a position before handing it off to someone else. I frequently work in the warehouse, run sales calls, provide product feedback, and talk to customers. All of this leads to a better understanding of how it should be done so that when it’s handed off, the framework is easy to understand for everyone who works here.

Working with others, both in corporate and startup culture taught me a lot about what I want to follow in a leader. A methodology that has worked well for us here is the ‘I Do, You Do.’ method. This allows oversight at the beginning but eventual autonomy. Doing this avoids heavy handedness, solicited help, and less micro managing.

I also love reading. Some books that have shaped me as a leader are Good To Great by Jim Collins, Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin.

How do you build culture?

We’re tiny so culture has been more tough than I would have thought. I make sure to talk to everyone every single day in some capacity—and not only about work related things. We’re a very tight-knit team. We frequently get lunch, go on walks as we’re located in a historic district, you might even catch us at the local ice cream shop, Scoops!

Detail your recruitment strategy. How do you hire all-star talent?

Everyone is local, and funny enough everyone has been introduced to us. No recruiting yet but if I were to go that route I would work through highly-vetted introductions. I know good people that know good people. The network is everything!

I’m 40 years old so I’ve been developing this network of friends over my professional career that have lead to lots of introductions. This leads to new sales, meeting incredible people, and wonderful new teammates!

We bring people on contract first, see how they work within the team and role and then move to a full-time position. We still have a few contractors but they are only for part-time things that we do. We’ve only had one full-time person leave since 2020 and they now work with foster children and families here in Georgia!

How do you set goals?

Although we’re working towards it, we don’t have formal KPIs. But I personally have them for things like monthly and quarterly sales. Aside from that we have a mantra—’never compromise accuracy’. 

I have our team regularly push back on account management, sales, or receiving if something is going to compromise accuracy for our customers or for their people on the receiving end of the gifts. We also regularly meet to talk long term strategy and short term implementation.

We use an old school whiteboard and sticky notes. We translate tasks from there into actionable items inside Linear, our task management software.

Do you run hybrid, on-site or remote and why?

Most is on-site because we own the 3PL (third-party logistics) which is a glorified warehouse. We need people on site because of that operation but we allow you to work from home if your work can be done there. Most everyone is in the office about 75% of the time but it’s totally up to you and your role.

Huge believer in planning on-site and then getting the planned work done remotely or wherever you choose.

How does a small company like you win clients like Stripe, Adobe etc.?

Well, it all happened quite organically actually. I guess some people would call what I am about to explain enterprise sales but it’s really just about being in the right place at the right time to create serendipity.

Adobe and I had a relationship from when I was a designer. They flew me out to Adobe MAX to chat with their product team on promoting a release of their new product. While I was there I was just starting Slingshot and asked to meet Head of People Ops.

After that intro someone reached out to me a few months later through Twitter DMs and we went from there.

Twitter has actually been my main platform for opening up these bigger accounts. I shouted out Stripe about how well I was getting treated when we had some issues with them, they replied and DM’d me also. They loved what I said about them and a few months later we landed a big project for them.

Framer, one of our enterprise SaaS accounts, was also Twitter DMs. I started using Framer to build out a new website for my dad. I wrote the founder about how awesome it is and he followed me on Twitter. I DM'd. Rest is history. That's usually my process.

General Electric actually came through LinkedIn but overall it’s the same. Enterprise sales is more about getting in front of the right people rather than running big outbound campaigns or spending large on ads. That’s my experience anyway.

How do you get the best out of yourself personally and professionally?

I get the best out of myself by setting challenging goals, both short-term and long-term. I also make sure to take care of myself physically and mentally. I eat healthy, exercise regularly, and getting good sleep. I find that when I'm taking care of myself, I'm more productive and creative.

I also believe in lifelong learning. I'm always reading books, articles, and blogs about business, design, and entrepreneurship. I also attend conferences and workshops to stay up-to-date on the latest trends. I find that the more I learn, the better I am at my job.

Finally, I'm surrounded by a great support system of friends, family, and mentors. They help me stay motivated and focused on my goals.

And that's it! You can also follow John on Twitter here, check out Slingshot here and also peek SwagAI—AI recommendations for your company.